by Nick Oldham
Wallbank was not a particularly large estate.
From the air it was basically an oval shape with one road dissecting it all the way through – that was Wallbank Drive – and Eastgate and Westgate formed arterial avenues around the perimeter, with a few other streets and cul-de-sacs.
Behind Westgate was Spring Mill Reservoir and beyond that was the huge expanse of Rooley Moor. Next to Eastgate was the micro-valley of the River Spodden which separated the estate from the main road, the A671, which ran north–south through Whitworth itself.
Philips drove down Cowm Park Way, turned on to Hall Street, then on to Wallbank. He drove slowly, acknowledging one of the armed response vehicles that had been deployed to the town to be on the lookout for Charlie Wilder.
Despite the fairly early hour, Wallbank was busier than usual. Obviously news of the night’s events had filtered through and folk had been drawn out in the hope of seeing something exciting.
Philips cruised, getting nods from the small clusters of people dotted around who were, in the main, teenagers.
He was well known on the estate and in turn he knew a lot of people.
EIGHTEEN
After dumping the police Land Rover with the two bodies in the back into the flooded quarry, Charlie got into the old Range Rover next to Luke and they drove down to Whitworth.
‘What are we going to do, man?’ Luke asked, trying not to sound desperate, glancing at his brother for guidance. Luke had entered a state of deep panic now but could see from the grim, determined expression on Charlie’s face that he was revelling in the whole shit-storm.
Charlie’s nostrils flared, and a cruel smile came on to his lips.
It did not take an idiot to work out he had just become the most wanted man in the country and if there was one thing Charlie Wilder wasn’t, it was an idiot.
‘You’ll be OK,’ he told Luke, ‘but I’ve got to run.’
‘Man!’ Luke cried.
‘No, I’m going to go … just haven’t worked it out completely yet, but I do know I need time and I also need to find out where that bitch Annabel has got to. I’ve got to assume she’s gone to the cops and that must mean she’s been taken to hospital, yeah?’
‘Seems right, yeah,’ Luke agreed.
‘My grand plan, therefore, little bro, is this: you become me for a while and hope that works. Worth a try, anyway. That will buy me some time, which I intend to use well.’ His smile, somehow, became even more cruel. ‘First off, we need some fresh clothes.’ He looked down at his bloodstained, drenched and muddy self. ‘Might not get as far as I’d like if I walk around like this,’ he chuckled. ‘Suggestions?’ He turned to Luke.
‘Yeah, I have, actually.’
Luke drove down to the southern end of Wallbank and parked the car behind a small block of flats on a cul-de-sac called Fern Isle Close.
Seeing Charlie’s puzzled expression, he said, ‘I know a guy who can help.’ He pointed to one of the first floor flats. ‘Lives there.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Billy Stone, local drunk, but a good guy … lives there alone.’
‘And … the plan goes how?’
‘You crash at his place for a while and I’ll go get a change of clothing from Monica’s. I’ll get some of Johnny’s, they should fit you.’
‘Right,’ Charlie drawled doubtfully, ‘and what are you going to tell her about Johnny? She’s not going to be right pleased to find out he’s dead, is she? She’s not just going to hand over his clothes, like.’
‘I won’t tell her he’s dead, simple,’ Luke shrugged. ‘I’ll just wing it.’
‘OK, I get that,’ Charlie said. ‘Get the tag too and get on the phone to that guy, get him to meet us here instead.’
Knocking up Billy Stone wasn’t such an easy job, even though he only lived in a cramped, one bedroom flat. Eventually he came to the door in his tatty boxer shorts.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ he asked, annoyed and tired and still under the influence of drink. His breath stank.
‘We need to come in, Bill, mate,’ Luke said.
Billy’s dog-red tired eyes registered the state of the two men and without hesitation he stood aside and gestured for them to enter, then checked either way outside before closing the door.
They assembled in the kitchen and Billy asked, ‘What the shit happened to you two?’
‘Long story, Bill—’ Luke began.
‘One you don’t need to know,’ Charlie cut in, talking with a voice that sent a shiver down Billy’s weak spine, especially when Charlie revealed the sawn-off shotgun he had managed to conceal from view up to that point.
‘Bugger,’ Billy said quietly, now rueing the moment he had answered the door and cursing his first instinct to help someone who looked as though they were on the run from the law.
‘It’s all right, Bill,’ Luke assured him. ‘You’re not going to get involved in anything here.’
Billy Stone was a fifty-year-old lag now. Most of his life he had been unemployed, drawing dole, stealing and being an alcoholic. He had been married twice, both the women also alcoholics, and his second marriage had been bigamous (for which he’d done six months inside). Now he lived alone in a simple world of beer, betting on the dogs with money he did not have, watching TV in pubs and thieving to keep his head above water. It was an existence he controlled and he had only himself to blame for his spiral downwards, but he also had only himself to fend for and this suited him. Although he liked a bit of company, he wasn’t interested in becoming embroiled in anyone’s business but his own.
‘You sure of that?’ Billy asked Luke.
‘Yes – sure.’
‘OK, what’s happening?’
‘Hey – this is my brother, Charlie. Just let him take a seat here while I pop out for ten minutes. Then I’ll be back and we’ll be going – how does that sound?’
Billy’s ‘OK’ was dubious.
Luke then left. Charlie and Billy regarded each other.
‘You look like you need a brew, mate,’ Billy said.
Luke got back into the Range Rover, did a quick circuit of the estate to check for cops, but it looked all clear. He drove to Johnny’s sister’s house, parked outside and dashed to the door, pounding hard to bring Monica to it in her night things.
As she opened the door to him, he forced his way in past her, then in the hallway he spun and said, ‘I need a change of clothing, Mon. Need some of Johnny’s stuff, jeans, jackets, trainers, shit like that.’
Monica stared at him open-mouthed. ‘What’s happened? Where is Johnny?’
‘Johnny’s OK. We just need to get some fresh clothes, yeah?’
‘I said, where is he?’ she demanded, grit in her low voice.
Luke stepped up to her and gripped her face in his fingers, distorting her features. She whimpered as he brought her face close to his. ‘Johnny’s all right,’ he said, feeling the tension inside him drawing his own skin tight across his skeleton. ‘I need a change of clothing, OK? Do not ask anything else. It’s better you know nothing, OK? If you want to help Johnny, you’ll just do this.’
She reared her face out of his grasp. ‘You’d better be telling me the truth. He’d better be OK.’
‘He is, and I’m telling you the truth; now let’s get some gear.’
She scowled at him, but led him upstairs to the box room at the back of the house that was Johnny’s tiny bedroom, just large enough for a single camp bed, no space for a wardrobe, so his clothing was scattered untidily in one corner of the room.
Luke stuffed an ASDA carrier bag full of clothing and trainers, then ran out of the house, but not before grabbing Charlie’s electronic tag which was on the fireplace in the front room.
‘Back soon,’ he shouted at the front door.
‘What about Johnny?’ Monica asked again as she came down the stairs.
Luke stopped ‘Johnny’s OK. He just won’t be home tonight, but I’ll be back later, so make sure the door’s open. I’ll expl
ain it all when I get a chance.’ He looked tenderly at her, then suddenly grabbed her face again. ‘Just do as you’re fucking told, OK?’
Once more she tore herself from his vice-like grip.
He pointed a warning finger at her, then was gone.
Two minutes later he was back at Billy Stone’s flat to find there was a mound of bloody clothes on the kitchen floor and Charlie was in the shower. Billy was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking whiskey.
‘Thanks for this, Bill.’
‘Whatever,’ he said, unimpressed. ‘I best get no shit from this.’
‘You won’t,’ Luke promised, but even as he looked at the soggy pile of clothing, a thought came to him which was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile phone.
He answered it, listened a moment and said, ‘Fern Isle Close … yeah, far end of the estate … two minutes.’
Luke then dumped the bag of fresh clothes and the tag on the table in front of Billy and went back outside just as a car pulled in and Dibney arrived with his very special tool kit.
‘Time of day do you call this?’ he moaned.
‘Serious time,’ Luke said, and led him up the outer steps to Billy’s flat.
Charlie had emerged from the shower fresh, clean and naked in the kitchen and was already sorting through Johnny’s clothing. Billy was inspecting the tag, rotating it as though it was a valuable antique.
‘This is double money,’ Dibney said.
Charlie pulled on a clean pair of underpants and turned to Dibney, then grabbed him by his jacket and slammed him up against the fridge, rattling the few contents inside it.
‘You’ll get paid, just put the tag back on, eh?’ He tossed him aside and turned back to the clothes.
‘But put it on me,’ Luke said, shaking a leg.
‘On you?’ Dibney said, brushing himself down after being ruffled by Charlie.
‘On me.’
‘Fine,’ he said, and had it fitted within five minutes. A few minutes after that he was on his way home with £400 in his pocket, counted from a wad of cash that Luke had in his jacket.
Luke and Charlie regarded each other.
‘Well, man,’ Charlie said.
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Didn’t go as planned.’
‘No.’
‘Anyway, you go and get your head down if you can. I’ll do the same here for an hour.’ Charlie glanced at Billy Stone. ‘If you don’t mind, that is?’
‘Like I have a choice.’
‘Nah, you don’t.’ Charlie turned back to Luke. ‘Let’s just hope that whichever cop turns up knockin’ doesn’t know me or you. Chances are they won’t, otherwise this plan’ll go to rat shit.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘Finish up my bizzy here, then go on the road.’
They shook hands, hugged and didn’t say another word. Luke gave Charlie the keys for the Range Rover, which he had parked between some lock-up garages nearby, then he jogged back across the estate to Monica’s house and went to bed to wait for the knock on the door.
It came sooner than expected and two cops hauled him off to Burnley nick.
As he patrolled the estate, Roy Philips was very tempted to knock on Monica Goode’s door, but he was a decent enough cop to know that it could possibly spoil some of the plans – to which he would not be privy – that might already be in motion, so other than doing a couple of drive-pasts he kept his distance, continuing to roll slowly around the estate, eyes open.
On his third drive-past of Monica’s house, Philips saw an Audi coupé pull in outside which he recognized as the one belonging to Henry Christie, although the man who climbed slowly out of the driver’s seat looked nothing like the detective superintendent who had been with him at Abel Kirkman’s farm yesterday afternoon.
Philips was shocked by Henry’s appearance. Although he had heard what had happened overnight, the extent of the effect on Henry had not really been explained, nor the fact that the pristine Audi that Philips had seen yesterday had received such a battering.
Philips pulled in behind and got out of his car.
‘Mr Christie?’
Henry turned slowly, his face a terrible mess, looking to Philips as if someone had scraped a cheese grater down the side of it.
Philips could not help but blaspheme at the sight.
‘Morning to you, too, Roy,’ Henry said affably. ‘How you doing?’
‘I’m … good. Christ,’ he said again. ‘You ran into Charlie Wilder.’
‘Could say that.’
‘I’m so sorry about the chief. How did he …?’
‘Die? Not totally sure yet until the post-mortem.’
‘I heard he got shot.’
Henry pointed at his own face. ‘He got the other half of this – the worse half.’ Henry shrugged ineffectually. ‘And Charlie pulled the trigger.’
‘I know him; I got him sent down. I pegged him as a dangerous individual back then.’
‘Oh yeah – a tiger prodded with a shitty stick.’
‘Erm, you want me to come to the house with you? I know Monica too.’
Henry shook his head. ‘I want a one-to-one with this lass.’
‘Understood.’
‘Oh, by the way, well done – hopefully – for finding the Land Rover.’ Henry jerked his thumb at Monica’s house. ‘Her brother’s in the back of it, I think, plus another lad. Could have been me and the chief, too, if we’d played our cards right.’
‘So, so sad about the chief,’ Philips said again.
Henry’s head dithered nervously, affected by Philips’s words. ‘Don’t go there. I’ve boxed it away until I collar Charlie Wilder.’
‘OK. I’ll just—’
‘Keep patrolling, and don’t go near him if you see him. Oh, and don’t forget Abel Kirkman’s relatives either – something else I need to get sorted out. Can’t forget it just because of what happened after, can I?’
‘I won’t, boss. I’m assuming a lot of cops’ll be descending on Whitworth very soon.’
Henry nodded. ‘More than in the rest of the county put together and if Charlie’s here, then we’re going to flush him out and if he comes out shooting, that’ll be just too bad for him.’
Henry walked up to Monica’s house and Philips got back into the police car.
He banged hard on Monica’s front door, noting its flimsiness, the damage done to it, even jemmy marks by the lock. The pleasures of living on a council estate, he thought cynically.
When there was no reply, he banged again and again until he was pounding remorselessly with the side of his fist like a mad man until the door opened and she stood there scowling at him, her eyes registering his face with a little shock – but only for an instant.
Henry held up his blood-smeared warrant card in a clear plastic evidence bag. ‘Detective Superintendent Henry Christie,’ he announced himself. ‘I want to talk to you – and don’t even think of closing the door because I’ll tell you this, love—’ here he bent close to her face and growled softly, not caring if he was intimidating her – ‘I’m in no mood to piss around.’
He saw her swallow, then wordlessly she opened the door fully and allowed him in.
In the living room, he turned to face her.
‘You know what’s going on?’
‘No,’ she said sullenly, ‘why should I?’
‘You’re a gangster’s moll by all accounts,’ Henry put to her.
‘You are so wrong, whatever your name is.’
‘Henry Christie.’
‘What are you doing here? The cops have already been and made an arrest. There’s no one else here except me.’
‘I want to know where Charlie Wilder is.’
‘Why should I know that?’
‘Because this is his address according to the prison release details.’
She shook her head as if he was stupid. ‘If you don’t know how that works, you’re an idiot. He needed an address, this was it. End of.�
��
‘All right, I’ll have that. So where is he?’
‘Actually, I don’t know. He came here yesterday afternoon, but I wasn’t even here, so I haven’t seen him at all, actually,’ she sneered.
‘But he left his ankle tag here.’
‘His business,’ she shrugged.
‘Where’s Johnny, your brother?’
She shrugged. ‘How should I know?’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Yesterday morning, I think … I’m not his keeper, y’know.’
What Henry was about to say next was interrupted by his personal radio: ‘Superintendent Christie, receiving?’
Keeping his eyes locked on to Monica, Henry fished the PR out of his pocket and answered, ‘Stand by … I’ll give you a shout back.’ He recognized the voice calling as that of Jerry Tope.
‘It’s urgent, boss.’
‘Two minutes,’ Henry said with finality. He did not want to lose the momentum of the conversation with Monica. He said to her, ‘Sit down, love, we need to talk.’
Jerry Tope had been working hard on the stuff Henry had delegated to him with regards to circulating Charlie Wilder’s details. As he did it he was furious with himself over the issue of identifying Luke Wilder, but tried not to beat himself up too much because it was just the way his mind worked and he couldn’t change that.
The problem was that Tope looked at information, intelligence, reports, whatever, played with it, mulled it over at his own speed and then found the nuggets of gold from that process, which often took a while.
Normally it did not matter too much. He was an intelligence analyst, and the key word there was ‘analyst’. A word, he would argue, which in itself suggested a certain laid-back approach, a plodding quality to what he did. He usually sat in an office at headquarters, poring over stuff, but was seldom operational, on the coalface as it were, and more rarely in at the kill when an arrest was made.
